Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable automatically switches you to Mac, gives you a high-five
By Nilay Patel 
posted Nov 12th 2008 5:04PM
posted Nov 12th 2008 5:04PM
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Poor PC probably feels violated :(
That's great... or you could NOT spend 50$ and use Dropbox...
If you don't mind waiting for files to upload to the web that is.
I actually might be interested if the transfer rate is high.
or use a firewire cable
what's a fire wire cable? My new Macbook doesn't have one. (and my PC is too cheap for gigabyte Ethernet)
After the transfer is complete, the device does a low-level reformat of the PC's hard-drive to make SURE the switchover to Mac is complete.
... and then sends a surge into the USB controller in an attempt to fry the mobo?
Why'd you do that for?!
Or I could use a cheap USB drive and do the file transfer myself... without shite software....
Boy, Belkin constantly puts out seriously overpriced pieces of wire... at least make on side of the wire black...
Funny you should talk about overpriced...
Belkin does make some expensive tech accessories, but from the one that I own, the quality is good, and they function as advertisied. That said, I only own a pair of headphones, and while the cost was rather excessive ($39), they are the only pair I could find that had a built-in iPhone button/mic, as well as decent frequency range and a fabric coated cable to prevent tangling. In my eyes (ears?) it was a well-spent $39.
As a bonus, they make me look like a mentally unbalanced person talking to myself on the bus, so I always get left alone :P
The only thing you don't want to buy from Belkin is the FM Transmitters. Every one I've seen has stopped working in some ungodly short amount of time. I've even seen one die before the battery in it was spent.
I would also second that Belkin makes nice stuff. While you could do it with an external drive, you will still likely need to use some software. And which to use? The average user (probably Belkin's target, right?) will use Time Machine, but it's still buggy. I imagine, and hope, that Belkin's cable and software is designed to fix that very problem. And if it does do that? If it does transfer everything in an easier and more reliable and efficient/faster way than Time Machine? It's worth the $50.
For sure.
My two cents anyway. I still like Belkin.
Well think of it this way.. Belkin is the Apple of cables..
I don't think I've ever seen nice cables as those from Belkin.. there's always some design to them..
and this is better than portable hard drive why?
Probably because it's cheaper than a 250GB+ drive (give or take). If we're talking tiny amounts of data though it would seem rather overpriced.
Well, specifically it is better for the task because it will be faster and automate the migration process. OS X has a utility for migrating data from an old Mac to a new Mac via a Firewire connection so this cable effectively does the same thing. This said, the external hard drive has the major plus point of being reusable whereas this cable might only ever be used once. Chances are that it won't provide software to migrate from a Mac back to a PC, should you feel inclined to do so in the future.
epic sigh..
The $50 price tag makes sure you are getting nothing less than what you would expect from your transistion to Mac
over priced pretty crap?
oh and I am a mac guy... so don't call me a troll.
$40 of the price is for that weird plastic Belkin tag thingy on the cable.
LOL, too true. The $50 price tag is just a primer of what's to come in the world of Apple.
Oh and "air of quiet superiority" should be changed to "air of obnoxious and snooty false-superiority". JK fanboys!
I've always had Macs and other PC's, because I just love gadgets and computers... but I've always been dissapointed with Apple's products. Too much eye candy, not enough functionality, and way too high of a price tag. I remember I had one of the first Apple digital cameras (took horrible pictures but hey, like I said, I love gadgets!), that thing cost thousands of dollars and was less useful than a Polaroid.
Can you use this between two PCs or is this strictly heterOSexual?
i see what you did there
more like heterOSeXual
That doesn't appear to hold all that much Kool-Aid, so I don't see how exactly it makes the switch complete.
It has high potency levels. A little goes a long way.
This would be great for getting my office to switch to Macs. Every PC we have is down for service at least once a week.
To do any real work, I have to boot off my pendrive into Ubuntu, where I have not had a single crash yet.
Maybe your office needs to hire a proper IT manager.
Also, everyone should swear to stop looking at porn while at work.
This is the year 2008. Everyone knows why PCs crash. Saying, "My PC crashes all the time" is the same as saying, "I'm a flipping moron that can't figure out how to NOT break shit."
My company took a hard stance against people breaking their PCs after the CIO had a study done on the amount of money wasted annually on fixing problems caused by stupidity. The stance was: if you break it, you're at the bottom of the priority list and your computer WILL NOT BE FIXED until nothing else needs fixing. If you miss deadlines, etc. because your PC is down, you could very well be terminated.
Oddly enough, only a couple of people had to be let go before everyone realized they were serious. We don't have people breaking their PCs anymore. Fancy that.
"If you miss deadlines, etc. because your PC is down, you could very well be terminated."
Is this Skynet's definition of terminated? Sounds a bit harsh to me...
Not harsh at all, Andy. It's not difficult to not break your PC. It's even easier to not break it when using it in a business environment. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's damned near impossible to break your PC in a business environment without doing it on purpose.
So, given the numerous agreements signed upon employment that you won't engage in activities that would break your PC, I think it's actually quite lenient of them to wait until deadlines are missed because someone broke their own PC, and IT was too busy fixing real problems to undo your idiocy.
If a UPS driver took a knife and slashed the tires on his truck, and subsequently couldn't make his deliveries on time, how long do you think he'd remain employed by UPS?
So I could spend $50 and use this or just go to the apple store and have them to it for free.
Forgot about the Genius Bar being able to do that, but isn't it only free if you're eligible for support (within the first year of purchasing the Mac or have AppleCare)?
My closest Apple Store is 150 miles away...
and having to finance a tank of gas nowadays doesn't make me want to run to the snotty teenager behind the Genius Bar desk and have him treat me as "A PC guy"
spend $75 in gas, or $60 for a dongle.
That was easy.
yep because gas prices are just SKYROCKETING now aren't they ???
not...
Haha and it's my job to do that at the apple store...
You'd be surprised how many times shit just will not network correctly lol
For $50 you can get an 80 gig hard drive which would get more use then this cable...
I cant connect my 500gb external pc formated drive on my ibook with OS 10.3.9... and the ibook will not read dvd either. Thats a pain in the ass for me sometimes. The only way to communicate is with a usb key.
In Windows Explorer.
Right click on C
Check share this folder on the network
In OS X Finder
Drag files from shared folder to wherever you want them
Done..
Of course, I generally store everything on my Ubuntu server and hit it via Samba.
Why would you have to move files between machines just to swi- ohhhhhhh
That's right, OSX doesn't have hardware support worth crap. Almost forgot about that.
Yes, because this is the only possible way to transfer files to a Mac from a PC.
What are you, an idiot?
I'd assume you could do it wirelessly, with removable media, removable hard drives perhaps...
OSX Just Works with NTFS, right?
Of course it does. Again, what are you, an idiot?
When I switched operating systems, I didn't move frick. I left everything where it was and just bookmarked the old locations.
Perhaps I should have chosen a more clear way of expressing my frustration here, let me state it this way.
You shouldn't have to get a new machine to get a decent OS, ergo, you shouldn't have to move files between machines to switch in the first place. I tried to get kalyway to work on my Dell in a dual boot, and it failed miserably; I have come to the conclusion that instead of selling pretty hardware, Apple should be forced by anti-monopoly regulations to either license their OS to third parties without restrictions, or cease to sell it within the United States in any form at all.
Their OS is decent (by way of being posix compliant), but my hate for Apple will not die until either the company does, or they get their heads out of their butts with our without government assistance.
You're obviously unclear on the definition of "monopoly". It's not possible for to make Apple do anything under anti-monopoly regulations, because Apple doesn't have a monopoly on anything. I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept for you to wrap your head around. Is Apple preventing competition in the computer marketplace? No? Then there's no monopoly. It is that simple. Period. Done. For god's sake, buy a clue.
The fact that you are so ignorant about OS X that you didn't know it has SMB built into the OS and can speak to any Windows machine natively speaks volumes. You're a tool. And now you're trying to tell me that really your problem is that you want to run OS X on any machine you want.
Boo freakin' hoo. That is not a failing of OS X, that's a failing of your ability to understand why Apple is not going to license OS X. And of course none of this has anything to do with your original post, which was ignorant to the point of being laughable.
In conclusion, cry more.
Aside from the fact that basic network shares and the ability to read NTFS partitions are two different things, I'd only be crying if I actually /bought/ a mac. As it stands, I'm loving my Dell but would like to be able to consider OSX a competitor in the open operating system market, and won't purchase an Apple product until I can. Due to the fact that the only emotion I've personally known text to accurately and consistently convey is anger, I'm not going to follow this comment up beyond this point.
Wait, you want to FORCE Apple to give up their intellectual property on terms you dictate to them? You know, rather than producing a product, setting a price and terms, and letting people decide if it is worth their money?
Sounds sorta fascist.
Oh for FUCK'S SAKE. Yes OS X can read NTFS. Yes, OS X can use SMB natively. Happy now? Or should I keep going? You realize I wouldn't have to tell you this if you had the slightest clue about what OS X can do, right?
First you said this:
"I'd only be crying if I actually /bought/ a mac."
Then you said THIS:
"would like to be able to consider OSX a competitor in the open operating system market, and won't purchase an Apple product until I can."
You see that last sentence? That is called CRYING. I won't buy an Apple product until they do what I say, waah waah WAAH. You still don't appear to understand that licensing the OS would undermine the company so badly that it would go out of business. Not surprising, as you have shown yourself to be nothing but staggeringly ignorant on the topic of Macs. Did you know that Apple already licensed out the OS once? No of course you didn't, what am I saying? I keep forgetting you're an ignorant tool.
The only reason you would be crying if you bought a Mac is because you're very possibly too stupid to use one. And believe me, that is really saying something.
Dum dum dum... Super Zak to the rescue!
because regular people don't install OS upgrades, they buy new machines like they're supposed to. I know a dozen people that couldn't pull their settings from their one windows PC to another...let alone from a PC to a Mac. This product is for them, not you with your funky Samba and Ubuntu servers.
If you cant figure out how to move files yourself and would rather spend too much money to have a computer do it for you then you deserve to own a Mac.
Good Riddance,
PC didn't want you anyways.
exactly
Congrats! You just described 98% of computer users. Will you be enjoying your contempt here, or would you like a to-go box?
USE is right. There's a reason why they have products like this and it isn't because people are stupid. Just because so many users don't understand everything about computers doesn't mean they are stupid and shouldn't use them. That's what tech support is for. And that's what devices like this cable are for.
Wow.. this is a waste of time. Connect the two via Ethernet, buy a Hard Drive (which will be useful again and again unlike this...) or go to the Apple Store and get it done for free.
That is, unless you just bought an Air. What Ethernet port?
It's called wireless. Hi, welcome to the 21st century.
sweet i love transfering huge files over hopeless wireless connections? anybody ever seen more than 2.5mb/s on wireless G?
i sure as hell havent.
Ever heard of Wireless N? And the point is that this is a worthless accesory. Buy a hard drive.
So, tell me again, why isn't this thing on the Crapgadget list yet?
well, you know how engadget and apple and ...
I may be grabbing at straws here but it could be that it's actually useful?
Look moving document files is pretty easy stuff but moving other stuff (e.g. browser bookmarks) is less obvious and this thing will automate all that. Sure, it's expensive for a use-once object but if it does what it says then it's probably an acceptable cost.
It has been available for 2 months at Best Buy (at least mine)
Doesn't the apple store transfer your files for free anyway?
If I were incapable of moving my files on my own (which is pretty likely if I'm buying a Mac), then I'd probably rather spend money for a cable and some software to do it for me than to lug my desktop all the way to the Apple store and wait while they try to find the power button, or become completely befuddled over the "Start" menu. =)
Oops...sorry Mac fanboys...forgot about your fragile egos. Please accept my sincerest apologies.
MSFT will develop a software to do the reverse and give Live cashback to entice people to use it with this cable
I can't believe the negativity over a freaing cable, only nerds would be this petty... Go play in dev/null land for a while.
Hmmm. I *could* use a $50 external drive or something else BUT if I didn't want to have to copy an ass-load of data TWICE, then this tool might be worth the money.
Sorry to reply to my own comment, but it bears explaining:
For somebody like me who works in environments where these sorts of transfers are common, the time this would save in hourly fees would pay for itself in about 2 uses. For a single file or a few bits of data that will easily burn onto CD/DVD or USB drive, it's not for you. But if you're moving 30+ GB of data, that might take a while to copy onto an external drive and then have to copy it again onto the other computer.
great!
Once you realise you spent far to much money on something that does half the things your olf pc used to do , me thinks its for transfering back from mac to Pc , you all just have it backwards
could you please cite a list of the things a PC can do that a mac can't? and if it's open word documents, i think you're 20+ years late...
Highest on my list:
- Play the Following games:
[Insert list of every game made since 1996]
@Chird:
I see your fanboyish-trolling, and raise you:
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Mac OS X)
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Oh, and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mac_OS_X_games
I see a lot there, that fall into the [made since 1996] list.
And before the fanboys go "TAHTS NOT MUCH GAMEZ LOL!!1", just like Wikipedia's "Games for Microsoft Windows" section, it is by no means a comprehensive list.
@papu:
1. Open up a command prompt. If you don't know what that is, skip to step 3.
2. Type "ls -Al | grep foo"
3. Fail.
Even something as simple as listing the contents of a directory that match the criteria "foo" is impossible on Windows.
Yes, I know the command-prompt way to list directory contents is DIR, but it's not nearly as flexible as LS.
direct x
oh , burn.
how about , Solid works
ouch,
how about giving me better specs at a competative price
theres your fail
*hugs Xps1530*
one thing pc users can do that mac users cant?
SHUT THE HELL UP
On my systems I aliased ls with various parameters as 'list' and 'listall'..
posix is great, but end users shouldn't have to be exposed to it just to use the command line. It can still be simple and efficient without being scary.
..as for the guy who removed 'o' and 'r' from the 'passwd' command, I'll have your head.
@Kevlar:
How about "ls foo*" in powershell?
Or, if you'd rather, I could pipe the output from ls (An array of things that, in this particular case, will inherit from FileSystemInfo) and perform a myriad of strongly typed operations on them. No silly string parsing around here, thank you very much.
If you put the Mac slightly higher than the PC, the files will flow back downhill to the PC.
Powershell is probably one of the best things Microsoft has done for windows in quite a while, shame it isn't included standard, or replaced the aging command-prompt completely. It's one of the first things I install when using windows machines, which is actually quite frequently. Both OS's have their merits, I just hope the fanboys can see that.
@papu:
"one thing pc users can do that mac users cant?
SHUT THE HELL UP"
Been reading Maddox's Best Page in the Universe I see.
I'd love to prove you (and the manly pirate master himself) wrong by shutting up, right now. Have a fine day sir.
Mac hardware runs windows just fine... so well that Microsoft demo'd Vista on Macs first!!!! Macs routinely beat windows machines with the same specs running Windows. Most PCs are just cheap. If you buy a mac you can try it out and go back if you really don't like OSX. With a PC you just reward those that don't try to be anything special.
@papu
I don't really want to get involved in this but Windows really is dumb as nails and it's one of the primary reasons that I won't move back to it. Try this:
Open a file in something like Excel
Close the file
In the Explorer, move or rename the file
Open the file again in your selected application using its "open recent file" option
Swear as the application tells you that it can't find the file
On a Mac this does not happen. Even while the file is open you can move and rename it and both the OS and application will neither complain, plus you can see these changes reflected in the application automatically. This also means that you can trash an a file without the Finder complaining that it is open somewhere.
* Note, I can't confirm if this is still the case in Vista. If someone can confirm that then I'd appreciate it.
The thing is that a Mac will do everything that a Windows box will and then do stuff that Windows box will find difficult. For example, there's no Aperture for Windows and that's a deal-breaker for me since Lightroom doesn't cut it. If you can't see that then you really are stuck in time about 4-years ago.
Anyone who needs this to xfer files doesn't deserve to own a computer, ANY computer!
I can see my Grandma wanting it. Although she'd probably ask me to do it instead, which I would do without hesitation, dropping anything I was working on, and running to her house as fast as I can, 'cause my Grandma is actually taking an interest in computers.
Also, Krug FTW.
While I disagree with your statement (this would be the fastest and easiest migration path), the cable would be worth more if it could migrate, for example, email from Outlook into Apple's Mail application. That is certainly a pain to do and an automated migration would be appreciated. Currently this cable only seems able to automatically migrate the basics.
LOL... mac users bitching about the cost of the belkin product, classic...
T'would be a pain to drag a desktop to the Apple Store. My mom just bought a Mac, and has little-to-no use for an external hard drive, all things considered (she doesn't bittorrent movies, watch porn, and is most likely not afraid of fire/sprinkler systems ruining her important files.)
So basically, don't diss my mom, because that's primitive, and nearly unforgivable.
Well Joe saying continually to yourself "My mom doesn't look at porn My mom doesn't look at porn My mom doesn't look at porn"
Doesn't actually mean she doesn't look at porn......
pretty sure this caters to the kind of people who purchase Macs...the kind that know NOTHING about computers. seriously, $50 for something that you could do for free? you must be joking.
Yeah, seriously. I hear there are even idiots who pay people to change their oil, too.
You know, i see products like this that say they transfer files and things such as internet settings. The thing im wondering is wtf kind of internet settings to you need to use a cable to transfer? Aren't most people using ethernet or wifi nowadays that pretty much sets itself up when you plug the cable in, or connect to the wifi network and enter your password?
They probably advertise supporting IP, DNS, defaultgw, netmask, custom routing, domain, proxy, etc just so they can list a bunch of 'features' ("Configures 50 settings!"). And then in the end it usually adds up to "set to DHCP, done."
that's one tiny dock
"We're guessing that has more to do with the Switch-to-Mac Cable's bundled software than the dongle itself"
Nonsense! It's white. It has everything to do with the hardware!
"air of *quiet* superiority"? (emphasis added)
You must be talking about Macs made by some other company than the one I'm thinking of.
PC Killer assistance!
First off, this cable has been old at all Best Buy stores for well over two months now.
Secondly, it's fantastic! Truly this cable saves hours.
The single biggest benefit comes from the fact that it migrates in a matter of five to ten clicks the entire Outlook database of components (email, contacts, and calendar) into the respective Mac apps (Mail.app, AddressBook.app, and iCal.app). That's one hell of a feat for a little cable and some software!
Another nice piece is that it will grab any specified folder off the PC. Nice for that given "BACKUP STUFF" folder.
woah woah woah, it does Outlook to Mac? Really?
Cause that would make my job at Apple a lot easier, haha, does it keep things the subfolders and everything? Because even O2M can't do that correctly haha
Seriously? That's not mentioned on Belkin's site yet you'd have thought that functionality would be a major selling point. Migrating from Outlook is never fun.